June 2011 Letters

Shout Out For Sister Rosetta
Kudos to Premier
Guitar and
Michael Ross for
featuring Sister
Rosetta Tharpe
in Forgotten
Heroes [May
2011]. I stumbled
on Sister Rosetta
Tharpe a few years ago while watching
the [2001] movie Amélie. She was
featured in a video montage scene
(playing the song “Up Above My
Head”) in the movie. My jaw dropped
when I watched her play and perform
(great showmanship!). Up until then,
when I thought of the invention of
rock lead guitar, I thought of Chuck
Berry. Now it’s pretty obvious there
was a co-creator—her name was Sister
Rosetta Tharpe. It’s great to see her
contribution to the evolution of guitar
recognized.—Al "Ancil" Palacio
via email

What a coincidence, Al! Amélie is how
I first saw and heard Sister Rosetta, too.
She blew me away! I thought, “I’m a
guitar freak—why don’t I know who
this is?” In fact, that experience was the
impetus for creating the Forgotten Heroes
series. Innumerable guitarists—and not
just the big names we’re used to hearing/
reading about all the time—have served
as living milestones in the evolution of
guitar as we know it. And no guitarist—
no matter how well read or how long
they’ve been around—can possibly know
them all. Forgotten Heroes aims to give
those key players their due by introducing
them to a new generation and adding
more context for those who only have a
cursory knowledge of them.
—Shawn Hammond

A Rush from Our Rush
Rig Rundown
Just caught the interview on Alex Lifeson’s gear
on Facebook. That was super informative and
covered a lot more than I thought they’d talk
about. I liked that you rolled those questions at
him in an organized “input to output” fashion
so we could get the whole overview. Just wanted
to let you know I really liked it and thought
you did a super-pro job!
—Dan Volpe
Chicago, Illinois

Thanks, Dan! It was a fun interview. And
it’s nice to have someone notice the amount
of preparation that goes into these Rig
Rundowns. —Rebecca DirksYour Aha! Moments
Thanks so much for the last two months’
articles of “What Was I Thinking” and “‘Aha!’-
Moment Redemption” [Tuning Up April and
May 2011, respectively]. I particularly liked the
Learning by Osmosis feature, which is something
I’ve been doing most of my professional
career. I’m much more interested in exploring
what goes on inside the heads of my heroes
than emulating their phrasing note-for-note.
I’ve had two significant “Aha!” moments in my
playing and writing lately.

I try not to get “locked in” on a particular
riff/hook and then close the door on it
and say, “that’s it.” I find that if I stretch
it—take it in different directions and
not just accept it as finito—that there are
endless opportunities for embellishing
it. Use a different key, use it as a verse
rather than a chorus (or vice versa), use
it as a bridge for a different song rather
than making a song out of it . . . you get
the idea. Explore, explore, and explore.
Parenthetically, I find that most of these
nuggets started out as something else.
They are what I term “happy accidents.”
Usually when I write something that
works and is actually noteworthy, I was
trying to do something else.

I’ve expanded the idea of Flesh Tones to
apply to plectrums, as well. Being pretty
much a late-’70s arena rocker, I had
come from the Billy Gibbons school of
“spank the plank” with the hardest pick
you can find. I almost exclusively used
Fender Extra Heavy or Dunlop .121
picks. But in an “Aha!” moment in the
studio with my acoustic guitar, I found
that I could achieve a much richer and
singing tone by backing off to mediums
or even lights. It made a huge difference
in the audio map of the tracks. I’ve also
gone to using the finger approach for
electric to achieve some dynamics in my
studio work. I’m not adept enough yet to
leave the picks behind in a live situation,
but I’m finding that there is an entire
new sonic world to be explored with the
use of my fingers on my Strat and Tele.

Thanks for the tips.
—John E. Mausen
San Francisco, California

I am so relieved somebody else thinks like me
about covers. I have felt a little bad about not
knowing a certain song when somebody finds
out I play guitar. As you suggest, I listen to my
favorites (Satriani, Paul Gilbert) and let that
tone, selection of notes, and playing dynamics
seep into what I create. I met a guitar teacher
and showed him one of my songs and I was
pleasantly surprised to hear from him, “Wow,
that sounds like Satriani.” It made me feel so
proud that I could be compared to such a
demigod of rock! Of course, I am nowhere
near Satriani, but your point is to let your
influences be influences and not something to
copy note-for-note.
Rock on,
—Edgar Cancel
via email

Corrections
In our May 2011 review of the new Fender
Pawn Shop Series guitars, we should have
referred to the ’72’s bridge pickup as an alnico
unit and the neck pickup as a new Wide
Range humbucker. Similarly, the Mustang
Special has Enforcer Wide Range humbuckers
with downsized Wide Range covers.

Keep those comments coming!
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